John McCain

As world food prices hit a record high, protests in Egypt demand the removal of the country’s pro-American dictator, Hosni Mubarak. No one can predict with certainty whether his removal after 30 years in power would lead to a constitutional democracy, or a theocratic despotism. The likelihood of an even worse regime replacing Mubarak is real, and has been increased by the widespread diversion of cropland to produce biofuels rather than food. That in turn has led to rising food prices that have fueled unrest among the poor in the teeming slums of Egypt’s capital city of Cairo.

Increased food prices have also led to increasing support for the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood, which has ties to the terrorist group Hamas: it provides relief and welfare services in the slums, increasing its popularity in times of economic distress, and it enjoys greater support among the country’s poor than among Egypt’s smaller and more Western-oriented middle class.

The Telegraph, a leading English newspaper, calls the recent unrest in Egypt and the Middle East “food revolutions.” It points out that “biofuel mandates” have “diverted a third of the US corn crop into ethanol for cars,” reducing food supplies and driving up food prices. “So instead of growing wheat, our farmers are growing corn in order to cash in on ethanol subsidies.”

Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer, and  imports “more than half of its food supply.” As CNBC notes, “It is food inflation that is” most fueling opposition to the Mubarak regime among the country’s poor. Egyptians have historically spent over 40 percent of their income just on food.

As Slate notes, the “anti-Western” Muslim Brotherhood “remains the only political movement” in Egypt that is “capable of providing nongovernmental charitable services. This gives it a reliable political base in the slums of Cairo and Alexandria.” Rising food prices have cemented that base, and driven previously apathetic slum-dwellers into the streets, shifting the locus of opposition away from the more Westernized middle class.

Obama has been an avid supporter of ethanol subsidies, with close links to the ethanol lobby, unlike Obama’s 2008 opponent, John McCain, who opposed ethanol subsidies. The Obama administration has pushed ethanol mandates, even though they have a history of helping spawn famines and food riots overseas. For example, the costly climate-change legislation backed by the administration contained ethanol subsidies. The administration supports them even though ethanol makes gasoline costlier and dirtier, increases ozone pollution, and increases the death toll from smog and air pollution. Ethanol production also results in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution.

Leading environmentalists have lamented the devastating impact of ethanol and biofuel subsidies on the global environment.

Even commentators with close links to the Obama administration have admitted that ethanol subsidies are a terrible idea. Matt Yglesias at the liberal Center for American Progress, which has close ties to the administration, admits that “ethanol subsidies aren’t a good way to clean the environment, but they’re a great way of raising the price of agricultural commodities.” Economists more critical of the Obama administration, such as Larry Kudlow, have been scathingly critical of ethanol subsidies, linking them to the recent unrest in Egypt and “skyrocketing food prices.”

Ethanol mandates also contributed to starvation, food riots, and a growing anti-American uprising in Afghanistan back in 2008.